Nibiru was the rising sun, a desert-hymn that swelled with life. Outside of Zilar's window, its sounds never seemed to cease, much like the way the sea always churned and moved. An eternal motion. A never-ending burst of life.
And though people might argue the meandering waters of Buyan should be the domain the god most frequented, it was in Nibiru, that he found the biggest pull. It was in Nibiru where he saw the humans thrive, their hands crafting the most ingenious of creations. It was in Nibiru where he felt most appreciated, his name a constant prayer on their tongues, mixed with the sweet swell of plum and the sharp strike of spices.
It was his sanctuary, while Limura was his home.
Letting the large door fall closed behind him, Zilar breathed in the scent of the place, a small apartment in one of Nibiru's busiest streets. Below him, the inventors he had spent his afternoon with still buzzed like eager bees, their words falling in a natural cadence that wove around the most abstract theories with ease.
Zilar pushed his hood off his head, fighting the urge to go back down again, to bask in the attention they turned on him without even knowing who he truly was. That was part of his charm, he supposed. Even without his godly title, they knew there was something lurking in his smirk. Perhaps they saw the moving cogs in his mind.
Or perhaps he was simply that alluring.
When he sat down at the large, round table in the centre of the room, the papers danced with the motion, spurred on by the wind. The apartment was filled with sketches and drawings, maps and anchors, ideas that burst from his mind and latched onto faded parchment. Half-finished and completed inventions sat on each surface.
A metal dragon, painted a brilliant bronze, spewing actual fire when it unhinged its jaw.
A moving, glimmering replica of the ever-moving constellations of the sky, not made by Itri's hand but by his own, artificial rather than genuine.
A tree made entirely of cogs, branches arched upwards in an eternal dance, he who it was meant for having never glimpsed it.
He should get rid of it. Bury it, melt it into something new, throw it into the raging sea.
Why did he still keep a hold of it?
It was his worst invention. Unfinished, uncharacteristic, underwhelming.
With a flick of his hand, it was pushed to the wall, hidden behind his newest project.
A golden music box, unfurling like the petals of a blossoming flower once opened, oceanic tunes drifting out in an invisible dance. He had attempted to capture her voice with it, that silver-toned edge where, whenever she spoke, stars seemed to fall with her words.
But Zilar had never been the musical kind. The sounds of wind-song and star-fall were for a goddess like Itri, who seemed to move with the currents as she walked, aided by those forces of nature which wrapped themselves around her.
And he felt her presence, the whisper of her stars against the shell of his ear. He didn't look up from his sketches, only smiled, and leaned his head in her direction.
''Hiding from me?''
But she could never.
In the dim lights of the shadows, she was a star chart. A compass ingrained into his chest, growing with the bones that held his heart in their collagen cage. She stepped out into the light and smiled that serene smile of hers, seemingly unbothered by the chaos that brewed in every corner of his apartment. In his eyes, drifting again, to that wretched tree. It was a raging sea, waves churning and rising.
Itri had told him, once, that she had always felt most at peace in the midst of a storm.
Perhaps that was why she looked at him so. Silver-tinged fingers reached for the maps and sketches that littered the large wooden table. Tilting her head, Itri traced his designs with languid movements. Her dress trailed over the floor, midnight blue and streaked with a shower of silver galaxies. He didn't think he had ever seen anyone quite as striking.
''You are thinking about him, aren't you?''
Zilar attempted to mask his grimace with a smirk. ''You almost sound jealous, my little star.''
Itri didn't respond, only smiled that close-lipped smile of hers, the one he knew drove the other gods mad sometimes. They couldn't read her silent expressions.
''I don't think,'' he said, ''any of us ever quite let him flee our minds. He's always present, isn't he?''
Itri nodded, a hum accompanying the gesture. The stars in her hair ebbed and flowed. ''And what of Caidil's prophecy?''
Zilar glanced at her from the corner of his eyes, ''Evîn's curse?''
How cruel, for his name to be attached to something so wretched. Nieba had always refused to refer to it so.
But he had cursed them. When they had chased him into death, their lovely Evîn, had cursed their existence with the final waves of breath that sealed his life into nothingness.
''Those of gold…'' Zilar murmured, fingers tracing over his drawings, brows furrowed. ''My ego is in an eternal battle with my intelligence, but I must admit, I felt quite the fool for ignoring it for so long. All of us, we have been quite the fools.''
''Can we truly be blamed for wishing otherwise? That, perhaps, Evîn hadn't done something so wretched?''
''More wretched than our betrayal?'' Zilar smiled wryly, turning his head to look at his shining Itri. ''I would have done worse. I would have cracked the world in two, and pulled you all down with me.''
Itri smiled, unfazed by his damning words. ''Has Ixtilaf taken over your body?'' Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the room, her voice adapting a sing-song note. ''Come out, oh great all-father.''
''Oh, he could only wish to take possession of this body.''
Her laugh was airy, and he swore he could hear the birth of a star within the sound.
''Our delightful Ixtilaf is doing what he always does. Ensuring he's the one to take the first step.'' Parchment crinkled underneath his hands. ''Seeking out the first of the Anunnaki.''
The air seemed to still at their mention.
When he looked up, Itri was staring. Staring at the metal tree, the tiniest of branches that peeked out from there where he had attempted to hide it.
Her voice was barely audible. ''Do you think it's one of them? Do you,'' she shuddered for a moment, ''think we might see him again? Caidil could be wrong.''
''When has Caidil ever been wrong?''
Itri looked at him, head tilted. ''You could say he made a mistake in choosing who to love.''
That, he couldn't argue with.
''Evîn's curse is real, no matter how hard we wish against it. Someone will avenge him.''
Buyan was a cloud of humid poison. It pressed down against her from each side, closer and closer, until she wanted to claw at her chest to free her lungs and let them breathe. It had been that way for as long as she remembered. And for years, her mother didn't seem to notice. Her gaze was vacant, two pools that were an unending, dark lake. The woman that sat by the window was a shell. Uninhabitable.
How often had she prayed to both Nieba and Ixtilaf, while sitting at her mother's feet?
To Nieba, she asked for help, for her divine touch to seal the life back into her mother's body.
And when that went unanswered, she prayed to Ixtilaf. She begged the god of shadows to burn her with his white-hot flame of revenge.
It never came.
So Naenia burned everything else.
Her hair was a sheet of shadows, whipping into her face as she ran. Her feet pounded against the earth, and each time her soles made contact with the gods' creation, the sound seemed to echo against her skull.
Against her hip, her leather bag bounced, heavy with the goods she had found. Retrieved.
Stolen.
It had been easy. The men of the village were arrogant, though themselves infallible, and oh, had they never learned of hubris?
Naenia had learned long ago. Naenia had learned that you could never truly have all you wished for, and that wishing was for fools. Children.
The world took what it wanted, without question or remorse, and had they not been the ones to teach her that?
The shouts behind her rose like a tidal wave. Naenia jumped over a fallen crate, running into an alley slick with rain. She was out of it again within a second.
And before the men knew it, they had lost her.
Or had they?
Naenia stilled near the dock. When she looked back over her shoulder, they were still behind her, burrowing out of the alley. But their stocky frames slackened with confusion. She smirked.
What a wondrous thing it was, to become one with the surrounding air, slipping into the folds of the universe, while they were lost in a creation of her own.
One of them stared directly at her, and his jaw unhinged like that of a snack. The scream that ripped from his throat was bone-chilling. Everyone around them turned to look at the sound as the other men joined in a chorus of hysteria and fear.
When the screams finally stopped, the shadowed girl was long gone.
Her house was veiled in silence. It was a shabby little thing, right at the waterfront, as most houses in Buyan were. The murky waters lapped gently against the wood that groaned underneath her feet as she walked the planks that led towards the front door.
Every day, it felt like a walk to the gallows.
Naenia swallowed, halting with her hand on the hatch.
After a brief pause, she unlatched it, entering her home.
''Afternoon, Ma,'' she greeted. Her voice was met with silence, followed by the thud of her boots by the door, kicked off because her mother had never liked it when she wore shoes inside the house.
She was there where she had left her, right by her favourite window in her favourite chair, with a view of her favourite cypress tree.
The quilted blanket around her shoulders was frayed at the edges, her long, black hair falling over it like a sheet of ink. Naenia had washed and brushed it that morning, and it still smelled faintly of lavender when she leaned in to press a kiss to her temple.
''Shitheads loaded their carts with too many goods today. Think they forget about me or maybe their heads are too far up their asses, but it means I was able to get you your favourites today.''
Her voice filled the small house as she walked over the shabby cupboard, its white paint peeling off. Small flowers created a painted garden, and Naenia ran her fingers over the fraying petals before turning her bag upside down on the counter, letting all the items fall out.
She remembered how her mother used to do this. Call Naenia over when she had gone shopping, because Atchara Kitezh would never do what her daughter did. Atchara Kitezh did everything fairly, even when people sneered at the girl who had her name. The girl with the mismatched eyes, bearer of bad news.
Atchara would pick little Naenia up and set her down on the wooden table, showing her everything she had purchased at the market that morning. It always ended with a little gift for Naenia. Her favourite fruit, a ripe peach cut and parted. A new paint brush, and free reign of any piece of furniture in the house. A small flower she had plucked at the side of the road, rare in Buyanese environment. And always something mismatched.
Two different colours, to represent the two shades of her daughter's eyes. Lilac and silver, something to which Atchara would press a kiss to each night she brought Naenia to bed. ''You are special, Nia. Something of divinity,'' she would whisper into her hair. ''Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.''
It was as if, perhaps, she was trying to make up for the lack of her father. The coward who had fled as soon as Naenia had opened her eyes for the first time.
And how had Naenia rewarded her?
By breaking her, mind and soul.
She glanced over her shoulder at the unmoving woman. Perhaps she would be thankful, if only for one thing. If only for the pain that no longer pierced her heart with the edge of a dull knife whenever she saw her daughter, and was reminded of the man she had once loved.
A can of paint rolled onto the floor, clattering against the wood. It was the one thing she had taken for herself. The purest drop of verdant green, caught in a sweep of liquid. Would her mother like it if she repainted the window sill?
She hid it with everything else in the cupboards, behind the glass cups her mother had saved up a month's earning for. One purple, one silver. One for her, and one for Atchara.
Naenia reached for the silver cup, balancing it in her hand. Her fingers, scarred and calloused, tighten around it, its cool touch soothing against a touch that is far too poisonous.
Naenia had never deserved her mother. She could blame the world for what it had done, for how they had isolated Atchara, spat on her for loving her daughter, and loving her proudly, but it was never them, who had done what she had. They hadn't broken the woman.
It was all her.
''It does not serve you to be so hard on yourself.''
She nearly dropped the cup. Her other hand reached down, to a hidden pocket where she stored one of her blades. When she whirled around to the source of that shadowy voice, her blade pierced the wood behind him.
She hadn't even grazed the stranger.
In her hand was another blade, but she didn't throw it. The stranger merely smiled, darkness falling from him like a burst of shadows, languid snakes made of smoke curling around his limbs.
The Shadowed God.
''I have come to make you an offer.''